Waking the Moon

by Elizabeth Hand

Paperback, 1996

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

Eos (1996), Edition: Reprint, 512 pages

Description

A Gothic fantasy set on a college campus from the author of Wylding Hall: "The unstoppable narrative just might make Waking the Moon a cult classic. Literally" (Spin). Sweeney Cassidy is the typical college freshman at the University of the Archangels and St. John the Divine in Washington, DC. She drinks. She parties. And she certainly doesn't suspect that underneath its picturesque Gothic façade, the University is a haven for the Benandanti, a cult devoted to suppressing the powerful and destructive Moon Goddess. But everything is about to change as Sweeney learns that her two new best friends are the Goddess's Chosen Ones. Rich and engrossing, Waking the Moon is a seductive post-feminist thriller that delves into an ancient feud, where the real and magical collide, and one woman is forced to make a decision that will change the world. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Elizabeth Hand including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author's personal collection.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member raisedbybooks

Waking the Moon is an incredibly engaging read. It is filled to the brim with Gothery and myth and mystery. I am a very big fan of dark and creepy novels, and it has been a long time since I have found anything as worthy of my reading time as this book.

The story centers on Katherine Sweeney

Cassidy, who moves to DC to attend the University of the Archangels and St. John the Divine. In the midst of what you would consider her normal college experiences, such as falling in love with her two best friends and drinking and experimenting with various substances, she comes across a secret organization called the Benandanti, who secretly control everything in our world. After Katherine’s best friend Angelica receives a necklace from a former Benandanti member, we begin to see what it is the Benandanti are so afraid of.

I completely devoured this book. I found it to be very well written, and those dark angels and mind bending hallucination scenes really took me for a ride. I will certainly be recommending this book to everyone. So, why did I only give it 4 stars?

Possible Spoilers Ahead:
Honestly, I found myself slightly let down when it came to what I felt was the point of the novel. So women have been abused, used, raped, and treated as the lesser sex for ages. You bring up the possibility of a Goddess who wants to take her world back and smash this patriarchal system that has been in place. And let me tell you, I was excited and loving it. I didn’t think it would end with the Goddess taking complete control, because we were shown the problems arising from that situation, but I felt that something in the world would change at the end of this story. And how was it wrapped up? Well, let me just say, it wasn’t. It all stayed the same. Why couldn’t we find a middle ground between the evil matriarchy and evil patriarchy? In the end it totally felt like we were left with this idea that OMG females are scary and bad and no way should we give them any kind of power. Not cool. Not cool at all.

"I'll love you next time. I promise"

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LibraryThing member ehines

Not badly done. Definitely heavily influenced by 1990s grad school feminism, but not fatally so. A college novel, and as usual with college novels of this type (see also The Secret History, the Rule of Four and many others), the college experience is romanticized beyond all recognition. But Hand's

romanticization doesn't bury or distort (too much) the more pedestrian adolescent crises real people experience at college. Rather it heightens them and gives them a compelling context in which to play out.

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LibraryThing member skyebadger

The story begins with a group of college freshmen at Washington D.C.'s University of the Archangels and St. John the Divine where an ancient order called the Benandanti are headquartered. It immediately becomes evident that the mysterious Benandanti maintain a far-reaching control of most of

society and that they are recruiting amongst the students. But when a member of the order finds a mysterious archaeological treasure and passes it onto a student, she unleashes the ancient moon goddess onto the world.

The story is complex and spans over twenty years, but it never drags or becomes overwhelming. The writing style is reminiscent of Stephen King at times, delivering some pretty good scares while spinning a web of mystery that ensnares the reader completely. I found the book captivating, exciting, and engrossing.

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LibraryThing member stephxsu

An interesting premise with lots of potential, but outdated in its clunky writing style: a covered-wagonful of telling-not-showing and detracting details for the sake of hyperrealism. The mystical element was interesting but bordered on cheap cinematics. But this was okay for me basically up until

the MC meets her two "amazing" and "wonderful" and "smart" and "beautiful" and "mysteeeeerious" friends in class, who give off a Twilight series-esque sense of too-perfect-to-be-real-ness. It was shortly after this point that I stopped, when I realized that I was probably not the intended audience for this tale.

(D'ya like all the words and phrases I made up in this review?)

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LibraryThing member Caryn.Rose

So conflicted about this book. There was much I loved about it and much that started to be just *too much* as I worked my way through it. I couldn't put it down but at times getting through it was hard. It is mostly that there was too much woo-woo for me - for others this book will be a wonderful

engrossing read.

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LibraryThing member flying_monkeys

Not quite sure why I gave a full four stars as I have no plans to re-read this anytime soon, other than the book enthralled me much like Sweeney with Angelica. There was quite a lot of stage setting, and it took me nearly five days to read just 125 pages, but after that I couldn't put the book

down. The worldbuilding and scholarship came across as believable and informed; however, my personal knowledge of the actual subject matter is limited so I was probably the easiest type of reader to convince. I wish I would've bookmarked the lines and passages that really stood out; there were several that stopped me in my tracks and I had to re-read them multiple times they were so beautifully written and evocative. The ending, though, not great. Especially from the feminist perspective. Oh well. I'm glad I finally read Waking the Moon yet I admit to being slightly underwhelmed.

4 stars

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LibraryThing member majkia

Wow. What an intense book. Creative, imaginative, populated with people well drawn and complex, and a setting that, for me, dredged up a lot of personal history.

Secret societies, goddess cults, complex personal relationships, all conspire to wake the moon.

LibraryThing member StigE

I found myself really enjoying this book. It's stronger in the first half of the book, more intense and tighter - but this might be on purpose.

The author is not afraid of using the language to create a quite heavy atmosphere, landing the book deftly in dark fantasy territory. Combined with a lot

of complicated and complex characters this becomes a recipe for a book that works quite well. Surprised it hasn't been picked up for a TV-series yet.

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LibraryThing member sealwhiskers

An interesting read

LibraryThing member Bookmarque

I can take fantasy once in a while and I like my novels lush sometimes, too. The occasional Anne Rice goes down well, but as much as I like some of Hand’s other work, this was too much. Way overblown, histrionic, hyperbolic and festooned with just too much language. It felt choked; as if it were

strangling on itself and struggling to tell the story. Way to hit me over the head with the feminist message, too. Patriarchy=bad, ok already. The set-up was interesting enough; the religiously-bent liberal arts college, the “chosen ones” (Angelica and Oliver), the “norms” (Annie, Sweeney and Baby Joe), the sinister secret society, it was pretty good. Then it just went over the top. Like those blue hydrangeas that people festoon their gardens with. A little goes a long way. To get through it I skipped a lot. All the chanting, goddesses, prayers, rituals, arcane lineages, sex scenes, turmoil and sacrifices. Enough!! It wasn’t hard to see how things would ultimately end, but prolonging the showdown did nothing for the story. Oy. I have the sequel, but it will be a long time before I read it. If ever.

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LibraryThing member ScoLgo

I give up. Tapping out at the 65% mark. I feel I have given this a fair chance but my lack of engagement with the characters and narrative has become overwhelming. There are too many other books to read in the world to waste any more time on something I'm not enjoying.

LibraryThing member macha

quite a tour de force, this book, centered around an epic collision in the presentday of patriarchal and matriarchal culture. really a lot of fine research behind it on goddess lore, and it all gets put to good use in this horror story built on anthropology, secret societies, and pre-classical

mythology, especially centered on Crete.

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